The Omega Children - The Return of the Marauders (A young adult fiction best seller): An Action Adventure Mystery (21 page)

‘The man in the desert said it was not time,’ Quixote said still with a dreamy smile on his face. ‘It was pretty cool.’

‘You said Lex,’ Ari said. ‘That you were in the heart of stars.’

‘I did, didn’t I. Yet...yet...I can’t recall it. And you said you were in the mountains, all over the world.’

‘It’s no use. It’s gone too. Mel? Armies?’

Melaleuca nodded. ‘Yes I used the word. But nothing, just the desert.’

‘Let’s try the green ones,’ Quixote said fired up. ‘They might do it.’

He plucked one of the green glowing bracelets out of the table and in an instant his arm shot upwards but this time his body convulsed as if receiving an electric shock. He slumped to his knees, yelling and screaming, writhing in pain, and then crumpled to the ground. Ari grabbed him, turning him on his back and a laughing Quixote held out the no-longer green bracelet. It now appeared a metal colour.

‘I should have known.

Melaleuca frowned. Quixote never knew when enough was enough.

‘How did you know that the green bracelet would have no effect?’ Lexington asked.

‘I didn’t.’

‘And look! It has stopped glowing.’

Lexington touched a green one and it too, stopped glowing.

Riled, Lexington tried to lash out with what little fire she could muster.

‘We cannot continue until we know more. We just don’t know what we are dealing with. Play is fine. Moving forward is one thing. But we have no idea what is going on. I am sure our mother’s did not mean to
move forward blindly. That’s....that’s...that’s...’ She struggled to find the right words. ‘That’s un-sagacious and lacks perspicacity.’

‘What?’ Ari said.

‘Urrr. Unwise, not paying attention to detail.’

Quixote rolled and rolled and rolled his eyes at her.

‘Qui, this discovery is serious.’

‘Lexington calm down. We don’t need to be serious,’ Melaleuca said sounding serious. ‘We need to ─ ’

‘What! Mel! Out of all of us, you are the most serious. You hardly smile. You say little. All you love to do is make decisions.’

‘Right decisions.’

‘Since leaving home we don’t know that, do we?’

‘I play and imagine in my own way. We all do. We all know that. You know that.’

‘Oh yeah? What if the green bracelets had been bad or the yellow ones? We need to note things down, draw maps, start writing ideas, keep track of all the clues we get.’ Lexington pointed at her head. ‘Start using my thinking. Like...um...why did the yellow ones affect us but not the green ones?’

She pointed at Melaleuca. ‘Start working out your feelings.’

She then motioned to Ari. ‘Start exploring with a purpose. And...’

She looked at Quixote, stumped.

As if reading her mind he said, ‘I still remember what I saw after the desert.’

‘Really! What then?’

‘What I see every night in my dreams.’ Quixote roared with laughter.

Melaleuca and Ari could not help but laugh. Quixote had always insisted that each night he dreamt the dreams that had not yet been dreamed. Lexington tucked her hair behind her ears and lifted her nose in indignation.

‘I guess then you can just play like a child.’

Lexington stepped out of the room to clear her head and spied another note on the floor. Her heart sank, as she knew it would propel them forward instead of slowing them down long enough to take stock of their position.

‘There’s another note.’

Melaleuca moved for the door though Quixote raced by and grabbed the note first.

‘Return to the girls’ room for the next clue,’ he said reading it out loud.

Ari took the note off him, read it and handed it to Melaleuca. Melaleuca and Lexington’s eyes met.

‘We have to return to our room,’ Melaleuca said.

‘Fine.’

Melaleuca pointed to the bracelet room.

‘Bracelets back. Let’s go.’

‘Awww,’ Quixote said.

‘If the notes are to be believed,’ Ari said in defence of Melaleuca, ‘then danger is around. Probably Aunty Gertrude. Guess she does not want us here. If we are found with the bracelets Qui, who knows what she might do.’

‘Alright, alright.’

They each put their bracelet back and left, and the secret bracelet room now sat empty, though where there had been five yellow bracelets now sat four.

***

As Daquan underwent more treatment, Quesob was put in charge of everything. He pondered his tasks and stared out of a window overlooking the New Wakefield valley. The Forunza River snaked its way out of the upper valley, passing by the sprawling township and carried on past the paddocks, fields, forests and swamps, making its way out to sea. The sea glistened way off in the distance, a thin line of sparkling silver on the horizon.

Daquan’s Cathedral-Mansion commanded a view of the valley except for one area. Across the valley from it, shrouded in bushes and oak trees, sat the original site of settlement in the valley. Upon it sat the Throughnight Cathedral-Mansion. Quesob had long since told Daquan that it was a blind spot, a perfect place for anyone to spy on them or to attack from.

His door burst open and a nervous-looking elderly man stood there shaking. Quesob recognized him as one of the workers.

‘What is the meaning of this,’ Quesob said.

‘Excuse sir, me names Amreth and well, the master said to tell yous from now if anything changed,’ he said as though he had rehearsed those lines. ‘But sir,’ he added and then started ranting. ‘It’s happening, it’s started. It’s happening, it’s started. It’s happening, it’s started. It’s happening, it’s started.’

‘What has?’

Amreth opened his eyes so wide that he exposed the whites all the way around his pupils, and then he spoke in a voice that sounded like he had seen a ghost.

‘The black bracelet! It swallowed the light. I thought I was dying,’ he said blathering like an insane man. ‘It’s evil I tell you. EVIL!! What was he thinking putting me there?’

‘ALRIGHT ENOUGH.’

Amreth stopped talking but remained scared and shaking.

‘Show me what you are talking about.’

‘NOOO!’

‘Show me or you will spend the rest of your years at the Borstal.’

His words rocked Amreth and it was clear from the expression on his face that he now had a hard choice to make. ‘I will take you to it, but I ain’t going in!’

Amreth led him to a small passageway between two rooms on the second storey. He stood before what appeared to be a broom cupboard and opened it. They both stood there staring at the pitch-black darkness inside.

‘Well,’ Quesob said.

‘I ain’t going in. I ain’t going in. This far that’s all,’ Amreth said backing away.

‘There is nothing in there.’

Quesob peered in and could only see more darkness. Clearly Amreth had gone crazy and was seeing things.

Amreth cackled and then jeered at him, ‘Scared ain’t ja.’

‘Oh for heaven’s sake.’

Quesob sighed and then stepped into the room.

An eerie weirdness descended on him and he searched in the darkness but could see nothing. Where did the feeling come from? He turned to address Amreth and saw that no light entered the room. Light stopped square at the door, like something in the room stopped it going any further.

‘What is supposed to be in here?’

‘I ain’t alloweds to tell. The master said so.’

‘The master is no longer fit to be in charge. Now tell me what is in this room or so help me I will not hesitate to take you to Golgotha.’

Amreth bowed his head in shame and spoke.

‘It’s just an old bracelet, lest it was afore...afore...’ He stopped and would not say anymore.

Bracelet? What bracelet? Impossible.
They had been looking for the bracelets for many years now. It was all that had driven Daquan on. It did not make sense.

‘How long have you known about this room?’

‘Long time. About ten years I should think. Can I goes now?’

‘Wait. What exactly is the problem here? What did you see?’

‘The bracelet started to glow black and sucked all the light out of the room. It’s evil I tell you. I ran in case it sucked out my soul.’

‘I can’t see the bracelet you old fool.’

‘In the middle of the room there is a stand. It’s on that.’

Quesob pulled out a packet of matches and struck one. The match flared up but illuminated nothing around him. Like Amreth had said - something in the room sucked up the light. He felt in front of him and his hand brushed the pedestal. He groped around and felt a small cold smooth object. As he rolled it over in his hand he could feel it was in the definite shape of bracelet.

All at once his mind crowded with questions and like Amreth he became nervous, not from fear but from the unknown. What on earth was this bracelet doing here? All these years Daquan had been looking for the bracelets and he had never told him about this one. Perhaps it had been a mere decoy or some experiment gone wrong? But that did not make sense. So far there had been no one to set up a decoy for, and as for experiments surely he would have heard something.

He grasped it and thrust it into his trouser pocket and light from outside the room flooded back in an instance.  Quesob removed the bracelet slowly from his pocket and once again
darkness gobbled the light up. He jabbed it into his pocket and then slowly pulled it out a little at a time, trying to get a good look at it. But again it sapped the light from the room.

Standing in the girls’ bedroom, Melaleuca read out another note that they had found on the floor.

‘Go to the attic. All you ever needed is there.’

Quixote leapt up and charged for the door, crying out, ‘Let’s go!’

‘Ari,’ Melaleuca said, nodding her head toward Quixote.

Ari sprang up and blocked Quixote’s way, grabbing him by the scuff of his toga and lifting him off the ground.

‘Put me down Ari. I’ll give you a good kicking.’

‘Quixote. Settle. We are going to clear ourselves before we go to the attic,’ Melaleuca said.

Keen at last to discover what they were here for, they ran through all the events since their last clearing though the note overshadowed it. Toward the end of it Lexington made a little noise of annoyance and turned her back on them. Melaleuca dreaded to ask though Lexington spun around and spoke.

‘The point of a clearing is to come up with new ideas and suggestions on how things could have been done better...so…’

‘We can’t go back and do things we have already done,’ Quixote said. ‘It’s...,’ he giggled, ‘it’s impossible.’

Surprised at his use of the word “impossible,” Ari and Melaleuca stared at him and then at Lexington, who glowered at him. 

‘We can play different possibilities,’ Quixote continued, ‘but this is real. How would we go back and do it differently? We can’t.’ He aimed his words at Lexington and waited for her incendiary response.

‘First sensible thing Quixote’s said for ages,’ Lexington said down her nose. ‘As I was about to say, we cannot go back and redo things like we did at home, so this appears pointless.’

Melaleuca started to defend their instructions when Lexington held her hand up to silence her, though she carried on.

‘...so it appears logically there is another reason why Antavahni bade us to continue doing so.’ Her whole face lit up. ‘Even with my photographic memory so much has happened in such a short time that it is too much. So I think it makes sense that the clearings are now helping us see the connections that at first are not obvious.’

At times Melaleuca’s brain tired of listening to Lexington. She knew if they could just keep moving forward, all the pieces must eventually line up.

Lost in Lexington’s explanation Ari and Quixote waited for her to add more though after a few moments of silence, Quixote said, ‘So connect something.’

‘Antavahni, his words of a past age, 50,000 years, rock columns from under the sea, statues buried for hundreds, possibly thousands of years, hidden land. What do these suggest?’

‘Tell us,’ Melaleuca said

‘This land and its inhabitants belong to a lost ancient race of people.’ She beamed happy with her conclusion.

‘Yeah. The Etamols,’ Quixote said as if it were already evident. ‘This land must have once belonged to Antavahni’s people.’

Peeved, Lexington shot back, ‘Well then why are we here?’

‘What are the bracelets for?’ Quixote said in a smart-alec voice.

Lexington huffed at Quixote and turned to Ari and Melaleuca saying, ‘Anyway, the clearing brought these more to my attention. This shall be the new hyper-thesis.’

‘That this land is ancient and once belonged to an ancient race,’ Quixote said.

Concerned, Ari asked, ‘What if they don’t fit?’

‘Then we shall re-run everything again until a new hyper-thesis comes up.’

Quixote stroked his chin.

‘What happened to the Europe hypofesis?’

Lexington folded her arms and then massaged the bridge of her nose as if releasing stress from her mind and body.

‘Ancient people came from Europe too.’

Melaleuca walked toward the open panel by the fireplace. ‘Work on it Lexington. Let’s go check out the attic. We can finish the clearing later.’

The secret staircase only led up to the fifth floor and not beyond where Melaleuca figured the attic would be. After a round of discussing and arguing, they decided to chance it and sneak along the fifth floor corridors to search for a way in.

The light on the fifth floor corridor fought its way through heavy curtains, streaming in through grey windows, scattering scant shafts amongst the clutter. In the grainy darkness, statues, pictures, suits of armor, old fashion weapons, stuffed animals and the sort of knick knacks found in museums cluttered
it. Melaleuca tried to get a feeling off it but the sensation overwhelmed her. A lot had happened here.

‘What do you think it all is?’ Lexington whispered.

‘Stolen booty hidden by pirates,’ Quixote whispered back.

Lexington eyed the roughshod layout.

‘Look at how they are all placed. This is not in keeping with the order and discipline that Aunty Gertrude rabbits on about. It’s almost as if they were put here in a hurry.’

‘Like someone hid them.’ Quixote made “oooooohhhh” noises.

‘Not a very hidden hiding place,’ Ari said.

‘Perhaps they had little time,’ Lexington replied. ‘And look the corridor is nearly three times as wide as the ones below. Hmmmm...Perhaps these are ancient relics from their long lost civilization and they were about to be discovered, so they hid them.’

‘Maybe,’ Melaleuca said. ‘Let’s find a way into the attic.’

As the others wandered ahead, Melaleuca stared back where they had come from. Disturbed dust flitted like small seams of soot in the few shafts of light that beamed through the curtains. She eyed the nearest statue, letting Lexington’s hypothesis
drift through her mind. The male figure in the statue had heavy clothes on with military markings on them. A heavy moustache curled around his face to meet big bushy sideburns. After some rubbing, a small plaque at the bottom revealed the name, “Captain Edward Gibbon Wakefield, His Majesty’s Envoy, Re-Founder of the New Order, New Wakefield.”

Melaleuca knew that if she told Lexington she had found the man whom New Wakefield was probably named after, they would spend the rest of the day writing and noting everything in the corridor. Finding the attic was more urgent. She decided to keep it to herself for the time being.

After searching up and down the corridor amongst the junk they found no entrance or possible route to the attic though eventually came to the top of the Grand Ascension Stairs.

Melaleuca halted them, recalling Aunty Gertrude’s uncanny appearance last time.

‘Every time we step on this crabby pants appears but we have to get to the other side.’

‘Stick to the shadows,’ Ari said and pointed at the wall. ‘There is no light there. Shuffle along.’

With Ari in the lead, Melaleuca and the others huddled behind him and snuck into the shadows until they stood dead center on the fifth floor flight of stairs, almost even with the ceiling of the Cathedral-Mansion. At the bottom of the stairs, the entrance to the Cathedral-Mansion seemed no bigger than their thumbs.

‘It looks like we are staring down the steps of a pyramid,’ Quixote whispered. ‘It’s kind of dizzy.’

‘It’s another trick of the light,’ Lexington said. ‘Like the Photaic wall. See how the ceiling is so dark that it looks like it goes on forever. It gives the illusion we are higher than we are.’

‘Solved it,’ Quixote said with a smug grin.

‘Solved what?’

‘This building is actually an Egyptian Pyramid. That’s the ancient race this place comes from.’

Despite the darkness Melaleuca could see slight frustration quiver across Lexington’s face.

‘Focus!
How do we get into the attic?’ Melaleuca said.

‘We could try that.’ Ari pointed up.

A rope hung down from a trapdoor in the ceiling, right in front of them. Ari pulled it and nothing happened. He tugged it harder - still nothing. He gripped the rope with all his might and yanked hard. The others cringed with expectation and a small creaking noise started in the ceiling above them.

Melaleuca lay on her belly and crawled to the edge of the Grand Ascension Stairs and peered down to the bottom watching for Aunty Gertrude.

Quixote tapped his foot. The attic and its secrets lay just moments away, the great revealing of their secret purpose, perhaps super powers, perhaps.......He jumped with all his might, soaring through the air and latched onto the rope adding his weight to Ari’s. The ceiling creaked louder and then with a crashing sound the trapdoor gave way, opening with such force that the boys flew through the air. The trapdoor swung back and smacked hard against the ceiling. A loud noise echoed throughout the empty space of the Cathedral-Mansion’s Grand Hall and bounced back and forth until it petered out like a far away dying echo.

Melaleuca held her breath. This time for sure, Aunty Gertrude would beat the living daylights out of them or worse, borstallise them. The silent moments after became an eternity as she waited for their Aunt’s appearance, or for that matter, anyone’s appearance. No one showed and nothing moved, and as the realisation sunk in that the noise had gone unnoticed, she started to breath. An excited intense alertness grew inside her.

The ceiling shook and rumbled, and a ladder fell rapidly out of the trapdoor, sounding as loud as a hundred chairs bashing together. Again the noise filled up the vast Grand Hall, and again it died away to a faint echo.

‘RUN UP THE LADDER,’ Melaleuca cried out.

As if chased them, they all tore up the ladder into the dark attic.

‘Hurry, shut it behind us,’ Melaleuca said.

Ari heaved the ladder up and reached for the trapdoor and with surprising ease swung it upwards, and it clicked into place. Melaleuca listened for the charge of Aunty Gertrude. From somewhere below, small footsteps clip-clopped around and a faint voice cried out for Uncle Bear-Nard but never got any louder.

Melaleuca rolled onto her back.

‘Whew! So much for sneaking.’

Her heart beat slowed and her breathing settled. Expectant of the very source of what drove the maddening notes on, she peered into the darkness along with the others. Small crevices of light and tiny holes of weak sunshine peered down from the roof into another capacious empty space - of nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Totally bewildered and feeling let down, Quixote took off at a trot, gamboling across the attic in search of something, anything that might be what the note meant for them to find. An excited Quixote imagined all the things he might find, and thinking he saw objects that were not there, dashed in this direction and in that direction.

‘Spread out and start looking,’ Melaleuca said. ‘Lex. Stay by the trapdoor, on guard.’

Melaleuca and Ari headed in the opposite direction to Quixote though soon branched apart as the attic floor turned left and right. Melaleuca searched further and further turning this way and that way, finding dust, spiders, old cobwebs, more dust, but nothing else. Every corner she turned just delivered more emptiness.

Lexington sat by the trapdoor staring into the emptiness for quite some time. Unnerved at being alone, she wondered what kept her cousins so long. Obviously nothing was up here - another reason why her logic and finding the correct hyper-thesis should be taken seriously. She thought about the word “serious” and how they were instructed to carry on playing. Perhaps she could convince the others to use her hyper-thesis for some sort of “serious play.”

The emptiness started stirring around her, bringing life to the silent attic. The wind skimmed over the roof, birds ambled along the shingles and unseen rodents scurried along the floor, and every now and then she heard a gnawing noise. A shape formed in the darkness a small distance away from her. It shimmered and flashed off patterns similar to the creature she had seen and then died away, racing off in a blur. With curious caution she shuffled toward it - stopping when she hit a brick wall. Maybe she was just seeing things again, or maybe it was connected to the strange effects of light in this land.

Whichever, it resembled nothing like the hyper-thesis she had announced was the right one. Nothing in her reading of ancient Europe or the Middle Ages looked like this. She ran her hands over the wall and checked for secret doors and instead discovered a two foot high wall hidden by the lack of light where the roof sloped down and met the floor. Inspecting it revealed gaps all along, until she realised they were crenellations - the sort found on the top of castles where archers could hide behind while fending off attackers. The gaps extended downwards, below the level of the floor.

Why would they build them under the roof?

Melaleuca returned to the trapdoor having found nothing.

‘Lex? Where are you?’

‘Over here. Come look what I have found,’ Lexington said.

Melaleuca shuffled over and Ari and Quixote arrived back, both a little downbeat.

‘We found nothing,’ they said half in unison.

‘Neither did I,’ Melaleuca said. ‘Lexington has.’

They crowded around Lexington as she showed them her find. Quixote screwed his face up at the castle wall.